Forum Discussion

PaulinLeeds's avatar
PaulinLeeds
Dialled in
3 months ago

Wish to raise a compliant regarding VM treating their customers like idiots!

Last Friday my broadband service failed completely. Hub 5 went into a loop showing solid white light, flashing white light, flashing blue light and then flashing yellow light (not necessarily in that order). Its still doing that 4 days later. Have tried the +60 second pinhole reset and this did nothing, indeed, it didn't reset the hub as its not recognising the password on the hub itself.

Service status said fault in area, engineer on his way(!) and will be fixed by tea time Saturday. No neighbours reporting problem - one said they lost broadband for 15 minutes at the same time mine went down but then it came back on again. Next update arrived on Saturday saying engineer was on his way and problem will be fixed by next Wednesday 20th at 6pm. Yesterday, Sunday, I queried all this with the team on Whatsapp and was then assured it would be fixed within 24 hours ignoring the official(?) update that talked about Wednesday. Also assured that Hub 5 behaviour was consistent with the fault in my postcode area. This morning I received a further update saying engineer was actually on site and problem would be fixed by 6.00pm. It wasn't fixed and then I got another update stating that an engineer is on his way and it will be fixed by 4pm on Wednesday.

These insulting messages only serve to wind customers up so it baffles me why VM persist in sending them out unless its just a ploy to buy them a bit of time. If they haven't a clue what the problem is and don't know when it will be fixed I'd rather they came clean instead of insulting my intelligence. I am in the process of raising a complaint because I'm not prepared to tolerate this insulting behaviour any longer.

complaint
  • PaulinLeeds's avatar
    PaulinLeeds
    Dialled in
    3 months ago

    Sadly no way to edit or delete this post to correct the typo in the title!

  • PaulinLeeds's avatar
    PaulinLeeds
    Dialled in
    3 months ago

    And the saga continues....

    Update yesterday advised engineer on site and should be fixed by 6pm. It wasn't of course but you probably guessed that. Early this afternoon received an update saying engineer on site and should be fixed by 6pm today. Just received a further update, they've identified the problem and an engineer is on his way, should be fixed by 4pm tomorrow. What an absolute set of clowns, contract up next March and I'm off after 25 years, nobody could be worse than this shower.

  • PaulinLeeds's avatar
    PaulinLeeds
    Dialled in
    3 months ago

    I think VM are trolling me now! I lodged a complaint last night and this tea time received an email from the Resolutions Team. They claimed they'd tried to contact me but were unsuccessful but to speed things up they had proposed a resolution. The spaces in the email where they describe the issue and post their proposal are both blank. They then say if I want to discuss further follow the included qr code. This takes me to an old VM whatsapp account that is no longer in use and I'm not even sure it contains any actual information, i can't find any other way of opening it.

    So once again I am forced back onto the live whatsapp account and the first thing they've done is ignore the reason I have now contacted them and said my issue should be resolved by tomorrow. Ombudsman will be hearing from me as this is utterly ridiculous

      • PaulinLeeds's avatar
        PaulinLeeds
        Dialled in
        3 months ago

        It gets worse...

        Latest update arrived, now due to be fixed by 26 November!!! Had to vent at someone so spoke to retentions who put me through to a Uk technician. He was sympathetic and explained that he suspects there's a damaged green box in the area as they are getting reports from other customers but they regard it as an intermittent interruption of service rather than total loss so it's not a high priority. Trying to get it escalated but not holding out much hope....

  • PaulinLeeds's avatar
    PaulinLeeds
    Dialled in
    3 months ago

    The promised call back from the UK based technician never happened, no surprise there despite me thinking he was one of the good guys. Just received latest update, apparently engineer on site and should be fixed today. After 4 days of posting stuff on here I thought someone from VM might have pm'd me but nothing yet, also no further re my complaint.

  • jpeg1's avatar
    jpeg1
    Alessandro Volta
    3 months ago

    You are wasting your time making a complaint because the standard replies will be:

    1. A message saying they tried to contact you (which is a lie) and then

    2. A 'resolution' message (which is nonsense)

    But I see you have already received these.  Draw your own conclusions. 

    • PaulinLeeds's avatar
      PaulinLeeds
      Dialled in
      3 months ago

      Well, you were absolutely right, got a response to my complaint which is as you predicted. On Whatsapp now to try and find out why the Status Checker is now saying something different after a week of saying there's an outage in my area.... Don't understand why a VM rep hasn't reached out to me after seeing my posts, I've been without broadband for a week now which looking on here isn't rare but I still expected them to spot me..

  • PaulinLeeds's avatar
    PaulinLeeds
    Dialled in
    3 months ago

    I know it's utterly pointless but it helps me to vent, just feel so powerless!

    • goslow's avatar
      goslow
      Alessandro Volta
      3 months ago

      If the complaint is about a fault in the area, which VM is acknowledging is present, then there is not too much else you can do other than wait for it to be fixed.

      If you are experiencing a 'total loss of service', make sure you have registered that as such by phoning it in to VM to report the TLS.

      You should be eligible for compensation for a TLS but the scheme does not cover intermittent faults if that is what VM is trying to claim the issue is as a means to avoid paying

      https://www.virginmedia.com/help/billing-and-payments/automatic-compensation

  • PaulinLeeds's avatar
    PaulinLeeds
    Dialled in
    3 months ago

    I wish it was an intermittent fault, unfortunately its been completely dead for almost a week now. Yes I'm registered for compo but that's not my main concern. What drives me insane is the utter contempt VM have for their customers. Every single day since the problem arose I've had at least one and sometimes more status updates from them which I'm convinced are randomly generated just to persuade you to think that they haven't completely forgotten about you. The trouble is, instead of saying "sorry, your service is still knackered and we'll fix it when we can be bothered" they treat you line a 5 year old and assure you that an engineer is either on their way or on site and it'll be fixed by some date and time seemingly plucked from thin air. I blame successive governments for putting regulators in place to give them impression that they are there to look after customers interests when in truth they are totally ineffective. 

    • PaulinLeeds's avatar
      PaulinLeeds
      Dialled in
      3 months ago

      ... and today's supposed fix time has come and gone with no change. New update arrived 2 minutes ago and we're looking at the 26th again. Absolute scandal

      • PaulinLeeds's avatar
        PaulinLeeds
        Dialled in
        3 months ago

        A further twist...

        Internet still off but for the first time since last Friday the status checker is saying there is a problem in my area but just says to check back later, there's no box to opt in to update messages. It also let me book a technician visit which I've done but it's a way off. Now I suspect this is a glitch in the status checker and the technician visit will almost certainly get cancelled by VM but I'm hoping it's not VM trying to wriggle out of the loss of service compensation. 

  • PaulinLeeds's avatar
    PaulinLeeds
    Dialled in
    3 months ago

    Just noticed that this thread has somehow been marked as Solved when it definitely isn't, still no closer to getting my broadband service back on. Have flagged it to Moderator but if there's something I can do to "unsolve" it then someone please advise.

  • jpeg1's avatar
    jpeg1
    Alessandro Volta
    3 months ago

    Try clicking again on the tag at the top.